Lola at the Coffee House

There you go vonny. You've got the list.

What do you make of it?

Sensible people avoid Sinatra just as they avoid stepping in dog excrement, Osso.

You seem to have entirely missed the satire in "Little Boxes". Perhaps it is due to your ignorance of just what these mass-produced suburban communities were actually like at one point in time--the song satirizes not only the blandness and conformity and uniformity of that sort of pre-fab assembly line suburban housing, where all the houses did look exactly alike, but also the blandness and uniformity and conformity of the occupants of those houses (the occupants are also described as being made of ticky-tacky), which also characterized many suburbanites of that era. The middle class conformity, and the pressure to conform, was stifling. People were "boxed-in" in their heads as well as their houses.

Levittown, NY, for instance, originally built to help provide affordable housing for returning GIs after WWII, maintained it's "uniformity" and homogeneity by not selling or renting to blacks--it was an all white bastion--and, although the builder was Jewish, he really didn't want Jews occupying those houses either. If he was promoting the "American Dream" of homeownership, with his cheaply constructed homes, he was also reserving it for a decidedly WASP clientèle. He helped to promote defacto segregation in schools and housing in the North, which, of course, was no better than what went on in the South.

All of that is what resonates in that song. If you better understood the situation, you might better understand the satire.

You and I seem to have almost identical tastes in music, firefly. I did have a few of the Beatles albums, though, and during the folk craze I really, really dug Pete Seeger, the Weavers and Joan Baez. Dylan, ehhhh.

You are unfamiliar with the capitalist system, FF?

Well, will you look at that? Osso, I am so impressed. We have many of the same. But many different too. Thanks, that was really something else...................

I believe I must ask you to spare us this performance, spendi. My imagination objects.

It's interesting, isn't it firefly and spendi how our different experiences and temperaments seem to cause us to hear the same song and yet take away a meaning or emotional response so entirely different? As I said, the little boxes song sounds judgmental and condescending to me. It's the generalization that offends me. And yet, I can see how it can be understood in the way it was apparently intended by the writer. Conformity for conformity's sake can be offensive. And yet, if there are those who are happy in that environment, who are we to say that it's wrong? Those little houses are not for me, that's for sure. But I don't feel comfortable making fun of those who find it comforting and secure.

What a lovely day in the coffee house. Thanks Wassau, you look beat. Here's Serenity to take over the night shift. Good night all. See you tomorrow. Love ya.

Good morning. The usual coffee please. Anybody get any epiphanies last night?

A brick wall couldn't have missed the satire.

It is a smirking, self-satisfied sneer on people who haven't sold any records. And it offers no solution to the problem of affordable housing. A point in my post you have failed to address and the only salient point.

What it really says, and what you are saying, is that you are not bland and conforming and not "ticky-tacky" like the GIs who had helped defeat Hitler.





Are you sure? You have an assertion there to stand your position up on. That's a pretty conformist gambit. And I quoted Jane Austen's "common indifferent plight" which you seem to have failed to understand.

The song is political journalism. Played on a ticky-tacky guitar with ticky-tacky rhymes and sung with a ticky-tacky voice.

We have estates like that here.

The song doesn't focus on Levittown so your point about blacks and Jews is not relevant. If you don't want housing like that don't have so many children.

I get epiphanies all the time ed.

TV has to go because the scum that rises to the top is poison.

How's that?

You been watching Survivor again, spendi?

I don't watch that sort of thing ed.

Lola: I don't like to end a sentence with a preposition, and don't think for a moment that I'm just following the same madness as everyone else, that same silly little rule that was drilled into our malleable little brains. I'm an independent thinker.

You should send your Daddy round to have words with the person who drilled a silly liitle idea like that into your noggin.

Why would that be, Spendi?

I do. I enjoy the politics. I would not have thought I'd like it, but when Bernie happened to turn it on once, we started watching. It's entertaining. Funny that I thought for so long that I was too good for such trash TV. Well, shows you what I know. I have been a snob at times in my life. I don't like to think it's so, but I'm afraid that I keep coming face to face with the fact. These days, I watch Survivor with interest and enthusiasm.

Levittown, NY, was the original prototype for that sort of cheaply constructed cookie-cutter housing enclave, and it was made available only to whites--there was nothing subtle about the racial discrimination in their policies. The second Levittown community, built in Pennsylvania, continued these same discriminatory "whites only" policies.

The song doesn't have to focus on Levittown, it's clearly referring to the type of suburban tract housing that Levittown epitomized, and the discriminatory policies of these Levitt housing developments were well known.

As for "ticky-tacky" construction, a house in Levittown, Pa., could be built, or assembled, in just 16 minutes.

That statement makes no sense.

These housing developments were not constructed to accommodate large families. The houses in Levittown, NY, for instance, really were tiny boxes with only a few tiny rooms, and were smaller in living space than the rental apartments in the nearby urban areas. But, obviously, after GIs returned from WWII, they continued to marry and start families, or continued to enlarge their existing families, and this created a need for additional housing. And the idea of being able to raise children in a suburban environment was appealing, and the government provided incentives to make homeownership easier for these veterans, and builders, like Levitt, sought to capitalize on that.

None of that, however, justified the exclusionary policies of communities like Levittown, nor did it make the external uniformity and architectural blandness of these "boxes" any more visually appealing. And the external blandness and conformity of these "boxes" often mirrored the blandness and conformity of many of their occupants, who, at that time, experienced considerable social pressure to conform.

The song "Little Boxes" was specifically inspired by Westlake, a tract housing community in California.


"An anti-conformity anthem"--that's the point of the song. A song written at a time when social unrest, and sweeping social change, was about to erupt and engulf this country--things which would become significant breaks from the lethargic and complacent conformity of the past.

You have problems promoting individuality and diversity? Is that why this satirical ditty offends you?

Or are you really so concrete in your thinking that you can't get past your rather simplistic focus on "affordable housing"?

It seems to me that your thinking on this matter is rather ticky-tacky, and totally fails to take into account the historical context of the song or its intended message.

You have been known to stretch the truth, Firefly.